John Kinahan is Assistant Editor of Forum 18, which provides original monitoring and analysis on violations of freedom of thought, conscience and belief of all people - whatever their belief or non-belief - in an objective, truthful and timely manner. It publishes on Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Russia, Belarus and Crimea, as well as publishing analyses on Turkey.

The name 'Forum 18' comes from Article 18 of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. John has worked on freedom of thought, conscience and religion issues since 1997, and was an Irish member of the former Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

Jude Lal Fernando is Assistant Professor in Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. He brings praxis-based experience to the academic context in the fields of interreligious studies and international peace studies. His main research interests are religion, peace, and conflict, with a specific focus on the role of interreligious dialogue in peace-building, and ethno-nationalisms and geopolitics, focusing on Sri Lanka in particular, and South Asia more generally.

He has authored two books and his research has been published as journal articles and book chapters, presented at international conferences in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Some of these have been translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Prior to his current appointment Dr. Fernando held a five-year research fellowship (2008-2013), conducting a comparative analysis of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, and examining issues in interreligious dialogue, and the emerging currents of globalisation in Europe and Asia. This fellowship was funded by the three institutes in which he teaches - The Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE Trust), Trinity College, Carlow College, and The Priory Institute, Tallaght, Ireland.

Senator Ivana Bacik, is the Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin (previously held by Mary Robinson and President Mary McAleese). She practises as a barrister, and teaches courses in Criminal law; Criminology; and Penology at Trinity. She is also a Senator for Dublin University. Her research interests include criminal law and criminology, constitutional law, feminist theories and law, human rights and equality issues in law.

Ivana is a long-time activist with pro-choice and feminist campaigns, including campaigns to get the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 and more recently acted as Rapporteur for the commission and report published by Labour Women to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, 2015 - 2016. She is also the author and co-author of many academic books and publications on crime, criminology, human rights and constitutional law, her publications include ‘Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the Twenty-First Century’ (O’Brien Press, 2004).

Anastasia Crickley is Chairperson of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the treaty body which monitors implementation of the ICERD. She was the first chairperson of the Fundamental Rights Agency and a chair of its predecessor, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism. She was a member of the Advisory Committee for the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the protection of National Minorities and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chair-in-office on discrimination.

She has been involved all her life in supporting and leading civil society efforts for a more just and equal world where human rights are upheld, and particularly the rights of women. She was a founder member of the European Network against Racism, and is chairperson of Pavee Point National Traveller and Roma Centre Ireland. Building on previous work with Irish emigrants she is a founder of the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland and of Global Migration Policy Associates. She is also the current chair of Community Work Ireland, the national association for promoting community development, and Vice-President of the International Association for Community Development.

Linda Hogan is a professor of Ecumenics at the Irish School of Ecumenics and former Vice Provost at Trinity College Dublin. She is an ethicist with extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of inter-cultural and inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights and gender. Amongst her recent publications are Keeping Faith with Human Rights, Georgetown University Press, 2015, Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church, Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2014, edited jointly with Agbonkhianmghe Orobator, 'The Role of Religion in Building Political Communities' in ed. Cranmer, Hill, Kenny & Sandberg, The Confluence of Law and Religion, Cambridge University Press and 'Conflicts within the Churches: The Roman Catholic Church', in ed. Adrian Thatcher The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality and Gender, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Professor Hogan has lectured on a range of topics in ethics and religion, including Ethics in International Affairs; Ethics of Globalisation; Biomedical Ethics; Human Rights in Theory and Practice; and Comparative Social Ethics. She has held posts at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Leeds, where she was a member of the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies and of the Centre for Business Ethics. She has been a member of the Irish Council for Bioethics and has been a Board member of the Coombe Hospital, Science Gallery and Marino Institute of Education. She has worked on a consultancy basis for a number of national and international organisations, focusing on developing ethical infrastructures.

Colin Wrafter retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2016. He has served as Director, Human RIghts Unit at DFAT Headquarters, as Ambassador to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and as Counsellor (Development) at the Irish mission to the UN in New York. Foreign postings included press officer in the Irish Embassy in London and at the Irish representation to the EU. He was deputy head of mission in Buenos Aires. Home postings included deputy government press secretary, Department of the Taoiseach, at DFAT: Eastern Europe, the EU common foreign and security policy, UN affairs, Irish Aid multilateral affairs, Northern Ireland and Latin America.

Jeremy Gunn is professor of Political Science and Law at the Université Internationale de Rabat (Morocco).He specialises in the study of human rights and the separation of church and state. He has written and edited more than 50 books and articles, including No Establishment of Religion: America’s Original Contribution to Religious Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2002), which he co-edited with CSLR Director John Witte, Jr., A Standard for Repair: The Establishment Clause, Equality, and Natural Rights (Routledge, 1992), and SpiritualWeapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (Praeger, 2008).

Professor Gunn has served as a visiting professor at many institutions, including Franklin College in Switzerland, Peking University in Beijing, and Université Aix-Marseille III in France. He served as the national Director of the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and as a member of the Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion and Belief of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He was also the executive director of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board and a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.

Professor Gunn holds a doctorate from Harvard University, a juris doctor from Boston University School of Law, a master of arts in humanities from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor of arts in international relations and humanities from Brigham Young University.

Roja Fazaeli is lecturer in Islamic Civilisation(s) at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She has recently published a monograph on a conceptualization of Islamic feminism and human rights activism in Iran, and has published numerous papers and book chapters on the topics of Islam and gender, Islamic feminism and human rights.

Dr Fazaeli has been involved in a number of international projects with colleagues from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, from the Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (Hawza Project funded by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) and from Emory University where she is a global affiliate at the School of Law. She serves on the editorial board of the Journalfor Religion and Human RightsI andhas previously served on the boards of the Association of Persianite Studies, Irish Refugee Council and UNIFEM (UN Women) Ireland.

Jeroen Temperman is associate professor of public international law and deputy head of the department of international and European Union Law at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is the editor-in-chief of Religion & Human Rights. The Organization for Safety and Cooperation in Europe has appointed him as a member of the OSCE Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He is co-founder, together with colleagues from several Erasmus University faculties, of the Erasmus Institute for Public Knowledge (EIPK).

Professor Temperman's research is focused on freedom of religion or belief, the right to education, freedom of expression and extreme speech, religion–state relationships, and equality. He coordinates the inter-departmental research programme “Rethinking the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalisation, Privatisation, and Multiculturalisation”.

His latest book Religious Hatred and International Law is published by Cambridge University Press, as part of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law (prefaced by Heiner Bielefeldt, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief).

He teaches courses on Human Rights, Globalization, and Public International Law.

Amal Idrissi is a professor in law and political science at the University of Moulay Ismail, Meknes, Morocco. She received her Ph.D. in Law and Political Science from the University Hassan II in Casablanca. She was a researcher for the Project FRAME (Fostering Human Rights among European Policies). She has published several works on religion and law, women in the Muslim world, and women and the Shariah.

Ahmed Shaheed is Lecturer in Human Rights in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He is an internationally recognised expert on foreign policy, international diplomacy, democratisation and human rights reform especially in Muslim States. He has twice held the Office of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Maldives, a position he used to promote human rights standards and norms. During his time in government, he played a leading role in the Maldives democratic transition and in its human rights reform process over a period of transition from a thirty-year-old autocracy with widespread human rights abuses, to a Muslim democracy which, in 2010, became a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council with a record number of votes.

The UN Human Rights Council appointed Dr Shaheed to the office of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief in November 2016. Prior to which he held the mandate of Special Rapporteur the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2011-2016.

Dr Shaheed is also a member of the Advisory Committee on Interfaith Dialogue established by the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect. He is the founding Chair of the Geneva-based human rights think-tank, Universal Rights Group

Linda Hogan is a professor of Ecumenics at the Irish School of Ecumenics and former Vice Provost at Trinity College Dublin. She is an ethicist with extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of inter-cultural and inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights and gender. Amongst her recent publications are Keeping Faith with Human Rights, Georgetown University Press, 2015, Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church, Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2014, edited jointly with Agbonkhianmghe Orobator, 'The Role of Religion in Building Political Communities' in ed. Cranmer, Hill, Kenny & Sandberg, The Confluence of Law and Religion, Cambridge University Press and 'Conflicts within the Churches: The Roman Catholic Church', in ed. Adrian Thatcher The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality and Gender, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Professor Hogan has lectured on a range of topics in ethics and religion, including Ethics in International Affairs; Ethics of Globalisation; Biomedical Ethics; Human Rights in Theory and Practice; and Comparative Social Ethics. She has held posts at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Leeds, where she was a member of the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies and of the Centre for Business Ethics. She has been a member of the Irish Council for Bioethics and has been a Board member of the Coombe Hospital, Science Gallery and Marino Institute of Education. She has worked on a consultancy basis for a number of national and international organisations, focusing on developing ethical infrastructures.

Ahmed Shaheed is Lecturer in Human Rights in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He is an internationally recognised expert on foreign policy, international diplomacy, democratisation and human rights reform especially in Muslim States. He has twice held the Office of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Maldives, a position he used to promote human rights standards and norms. During his time in government, he played a leading role in the Maldives democratic transition and in its human rights reform process over a period of transition from a thirty-year-old autocracy with widespread human rights abuses, to a Muslim democracy which, in 2010, became a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council with a record number of votes.

The UN Human Rights Council appointed Dr Shaheed to the office of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief in November 2016. Prior to which he held the mandate of Special Rapporteur the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2011-2016.

Dr Shaheed is also a member of the Advisory Committee on Interfaith Dialogue established by the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect. He is the founding Chair of the Geneva-based human rights think-tank, Universal Rights Group

The TCD Human Rights and Religions Summer School is pleased to introduce two new speakers to our programme:

Professor Javaid Rehman

Javaid Rehman is Head of the School of Law at Brunel University, London and Professor of Islamic Law, Muslim constitutionalism and human rights. Further info here.

Mr John Kinahan

John Kinahan works for Forum 18, which provides original reporting and analysis on violations of freedom of thought, conscience and belief of all people - whatever their belief or non-belief - in an objective, truthful and timely manner. Further info here.

Jeroen Temperman is associate professor of public international law and deputy head of the department of international and European Union Law at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is the editor-in-chief of Religion & Human Rights. The Organization for Safety and Cooperation in Europe has appointed him as a member of the OSCE Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He is co-founder, together with colleagues from several Erasmus University faculties, of the Erasmus Institute for Public Knowledge (EIPK).

Professor Temperman's research is focused on freedom of religion or belief, the right to education, freedom of expression and extreme speech, religion–state relationships, and equality. He coordinates the inter-departmental research programme “Rethinking the Rule of Law in an Era of Globalisation, Privatisation, and Multiculturalisation”.

His latest book Religious Hatred and International Law is published by Cambridge University Press, as part of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law (prefaced by Heiner Bielefeldt, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief).

He teaches courses on Human Rights, Globalization, and Public International Law.